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Welcome to the Mystery Writers Forum!

mys·ter·y - Noun - A genre of fiction in which a detective, either an amateur or a professional, solves a crime or a series of crimes

writ·er - Noun - A person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job or regular occupation

I suppose you're wondering what we're doing here. We are mystery writers, for the most part. Some here might not want to call themselves writers yet, as that's a big step to take, but almost every person here writes, and most of us are writing or have written at least one mystery, so that makes us mystery writers, doesn't it?

What exactly is it we're doing? We talk, mostly. About what? Well, about lots of things. Many are mundane: "Having trouble with the present tense...;" "Romantic dialogue in story;" and "How many red herrings are appropriate for a short story?" Some are much more technical, like how do windshields and bullets interact, how do the NY State Town & Village Courts work, and what post-mortem histamine levels are normal, and so on. Because of the nature of what we write about, sometimes we get into more legal questions such as: putting fake people in real places and how one might journey through the Ohio court system. But yes, the basic idea is that we talk about murder, fraud, robbery, burglary, extortion, and all sorts of mayhem, and how to get away with it. Or not, depending on the kind of story we're writing.

It's not always book stuff. We talk about babies, grandbabies, spouses, Bouchercon, the Shamus Awards, Bulwer-Lytton entries, being hypnotised for a dentist visit, and all sorts of neat topics. We've been known to spend days talking about the differences between a caper and a whodunit, along with the various other sub-genres.

In short, it's a community of mystery writers, learning their craft, and sharing their lives, tribulations, research problems and triumphs. We like it here. The community has been around since 1997; we moved into this place in 2006. Needs a bit of fixing up, but I understand that Killz covers bloodstains pretty well. We'll have to redo the carpet though. Ah well. It's never easy. So come on in, and poke around. We hope you'll stay for a while.